Most of us have spent our lives caught up in plans, expectations, ambitions for the future; in regrets, guilt or shame about the past. To come into the present is to stop the war.
Jack KornfieldRead
Wherever you are is the perfect place to awaken. This moment is the exact place to practice compassion and loving awareness. You have all the ingredients to breathe and find freedom just where you are.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that the present moment is the ideal time to cultivate compassion and awareness, regardless of circumstances.
Jack Kornfield's quote suggests that, no matter your location or situation, you have the power to awaken to the present moment and practice compassion and loving awareness. It reminds us that true freedom and the ability to create positive change start from within, and that we have everything we need to embrace our experiences and foster kindness towards ourselves and others.
In practice
During a mindfulness workshop, you might say this quote to encourage participants to embrace their current experience.
Most of us have spent our lives caught up in plans, expectations, ambitions for the future; in regrets, guilt or shame about the past. To come into the present is to stop the war.
We need courage and strength, a kind of warrior spirit. But the place for this warrior strength is in the heart. We need energy, commitment, and courage not to run from our life nor to cover it over with any philosophy-mate rial or spiritual. We need a warrior’s heart that lets us face our lives directly, our pains and limitations, our joys and possibilities.
The questions asked at the end of lie are very simple ones: Did I love well? Did I love the people around me, my community, the earth, in a deep way? And perhaps, Did I live fully? Did I offer myself to life?
We can bring our spiritual practice into the streets, into our communities, when we see each realm as a temple, as a place to discover that which is sacred.
According to Buddhist scriptures, compassion is the "quivering of the pure heart" when we have allowed ourselves to be touched by the pain of life.
Much of spiritual life is self-acceptance, maybe all of it.
The habits of a vigorous mind are born in contending with difficulties.
Only if the third necessary thing could be given us. Number one, as I said: quality of information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two.
Ambition! We must be careful what we mean by it. If it means the desire to get ahead of other people - which is what I think it does mean - then it is bad. If it means simply wanting to do a thing well, then it is good. It isn't wrong for an actor to want to act his part as well as it can possibly be acted, but the wish to have his name in bigger type than the other actors is a bad one.
I love to think. I once considered taking drugs as an attempt to better understand an altered state of mind; however, I decided not to. I didn't want to chance ruining the machine.
I said yes too much. I said yes to certain projects that weren't for me. It was somebody else's vision and somebody else's dream and somebody else's artistic endeavor, but it didn't necessarily fit in my grand scheme.
The main thing is to have a gutsy approach and use your head.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.